Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/157

 THE AMERICAN

JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

VOLUME X SEPTEMBER, IQ04 NUMBER a

THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIOLOGY. 1

THE turbid stream of social theory which flowed out of the past into the nineteenth century carried a confused mass of knowledge and speculation about every aspect of collective life. The penetrating idealism of Plato, the realistic insight of Aris- totle, the semi-humorous sanity of More, the shrewd analysis of Machiavelli, the upheaving dialectic of Hobbes, the wide vision of Vico, the contagious paradoxes of Rousseau, the naturalistic explanations of Montesquieu, the scientific generalizations of Adam Smith, the optimistic dreams of Condorcet, the mystical interpretations of Lessing and Bunsen all these conflicting, overlapping, or partial theories formed a bewildering tradition which it has been the task of nineteenth-century philosophers and scientists to sift, enlarge, and systematize. The one common idea appearing in many forms throughout this mass of specula- tion was that of law as finding expression in the affairs of men. This recognition of inevitable sequences and coexistences, to whatever cause attributed, was the fundamental principle which the social philosophy of the nineteenth century received from the past.

The elaboration of this vast tradition has involved both analy- sis and synthesis. The mass had to be classified, differentiated. At the outset economic science alone had begun to assume a dis- tinctive form. With the increase of observation and reflection

1 An address delivered at the International Congress of Arts and Science, Department of Sociology, September, 1904.

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